1. Field of the Invention
The embodiments of the invention relate to a method and computer program product for verification of the operation and functionality of a data logging facility in a multiple system distributed computing environment.
2. Description of the Related Art
The IBM z/OS System Logger is a function provided by an operating system to exploiters running on z/OS. The number of exploiters of this component is increasing, as is its importance in relation to system performance and availability.
System Logger is a z/OS Multiple Virtual Storage (MVS) component that allows an application to log data from a sysplex. A sysplex can be thought of as a group of computer systems that act as a single entity by communicating with each other at the operating system level. Applications can log data from one system or multiple systems across the sysplex.
The advantage of using a System Logger is that the responsibility for tasks such as saving the log data (with the requested persistence), retrieving the data (potentially from any system in the sysplex), archiving the data, and expiring the data is removed from the creator of the log records. In addition, System Logger provides the ability to have a single, merged log, containing log data from multiple instances of an application within the sysplex.
During both functional and system verification testing of a z/OS System Logger, there is an ongoing problem of how to dynamically and persistently drive all functions of z/OS System Logger in a multiple system environment using a single method. There are many different test tools and applications that drive individual parts of z/OS System Logger, but there are no known tools or methods that have been derived for putting all of the pieces together in a single application.